Scottish nursery nurses to negotiate on local deals

Nursery nurses in Scotland have decided to enter negotiations with individual local authorities - but their strike action, which began on 1 March, will continue until they accept a satisfactory offer.

Public services union UNISON's campaign to secure Scotland-wide fair pay for nursery nurses was stepped up last month after the employers' association COSLA failed to respond with a positive offer of talks.

Nursery nurses' salaries have not been reviewed for nearly 16 years; most new entrants on the basic grade earn £10,000 a year, rising to £13,800 after ten years' service; UNISON wants an increase in the basic grade to £14-£18,000 a year.

"We are bitterly disappointed that COSLA has simply blocked all attempts to resolve this dispute nationally," said Joe Di Paola, UNISON's Scottish organiser for local government. "The huge differences in pay offers shows how right we are in arguing for a national deal. The hourly rates on offer range from £8.76 to £10.46 - a difference of £1.70 an hour! We intend to ask these employers how they justify these differences." "It is not easy to move to local negotiations," added Angela Lynes, chair of UNISON's negotiators, "but we can no longer ask nursery nurses to continue to suffer in the face of the employers' intransigence."

COSLA welcomed the move, claiming that the dispute "must be resolved by employers and trade unions ... in each of the 32 local authority areas, based on the make-up of the service each council provides". It argued that "proposals developed at a national level on a new grading structure, model job outlines and a career development framework for nursery nurses present a fair basis for settlement".

The Scottish TUC gave the nursery nurses its backing at its 107th Congress this month, and called on the Scottish Executive to formulate a comprehensive, fully funded National Strategy for the Early Years.